Sublime

for the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the “authentic” print

Distraction and concentration form polar opposites which may be stated as follows: A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it. He enters into this work of art the way legend tells of the Chinese painter when he viewed his finished painting. In contrast, the distracted mass absorbs the work of art. This is most obvious with regard

Within major historical periods, along with changes in the overall mode of being of the human collective, there are also changes in the manner of its sense perception.

What he objects to most is the kind of participation which the movie elicits from the masses. Duhamel calls the movie “a pastime for helots, a diversion for uneducated, wretched, worn-out creatures who are consumed by their worries a spectacle which requires no concentration and presupposes no intelligence which kindles no light in the heart and aw

In principle, the work of art has always been reproducible. What man has made, man has always been able to make again.

In his justly celebrated essay, “The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Walter Benjamin sets forth the idea, now almost commonplace, that the copying and disseminating of, say, a painting robs it of its aura. “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique ex

When the camera reproduces a painting, it destroys the uniqueness of its image. As a result its meaning changes. Or, more exactly, its meaning multiplies and fragments into many meanings.